Last year, we launched GovExec State & Local. Now we’ve expanded our team, built a new digital home and are energized even more to connect the ideas and people advancing state, county and municipal government across the United States.

July 29, 2015
Eagle Scout. Young Republican. CIA recruit. Air Force officer. CIA director. Secretary of defense. It’s not the resume of a radical civil-rights campaigner, but Robert Gates has now integrated two of the great bastions of macho American traditional morality—first the U.S. armed forces, and now the Boy Scouts of America....

July 28, 2015
Eagle Scout. Young Republican. CIA recruit. Air Force officer. CIA director. Secretary of defense. It’s not the resume of a radical civil-rights campaigner, but Robert Gates has now integrated two of the great bastions of macho American traditional morality—first the U.S. armed forces, and now the Boy Scouts of America....

July 22, 2015
It’s the dog days of summer for U.S. presidential candidates, when Donald Trump is dominating the airwaves and candidates who seem to be losing their purchase at the polls are doing whatever they can to capture some attention—whether that’s taking a chainsaw to the tax code, like Rand Paul, or...

July 22, 2015
It’s the dog days of summer for U.S. presidential candidates, when Donald Trump is dominating the airwaves and candidates who seem to be losing their purchase at the polls are doing whatever they can to capture some attention—whether that’s taking a chainsaw to the tax code, like Rand Paul, or...

July 16, 2015
“The history of North Carolina is not on trial here,” Butch Bowers, a lawyer for Governor Pat McCrory, told a court in Winston-Salem on Monday. Pace Bowers, that’s precisely what’s on trial over the next two weeks. A group of plaintiffs—including the Justice Department, NAACP, and League of Women Voters—are...

July 12, 2015
Governments have tried a vast array of tools to fight terrorism: Mass arrests. Intrusive intelligence-gathering. Buying them off. Aggressive checkpoints. Economic development. Massive force. How about just building a fence to keep terrorists out though? That’s Tunisia’s plan. The North African nation has been hit by a string of terror...

July 9, 2015
It’s a great day in South Carolina. After more than six decades flying at the statehouse—first atop it, then nearby—the Confederate battle flag will soon come down for the final time in Columbia. The state House of Representatives voted 94-20 on Thursday to remove the flag, following a 36-3 vote...

July 1, 2015
The Supreme Court’s decision last week did make gay marriage legal around the nation. Unfortunately for social conservatives, it did not, however, make nullification legal around the nation. Nullification is the historical idea that states can ignore federal laws, or pass laws that supercede them. This concept has a long...

June 8, 2015
FROM NEXTGOV
One of things that makes hacking so unsettling is the asymmetry of the situation: Unlike with a physical theft, the victims sometimes don’t know they’re victims for a long time, and once they find out, it’s hard to tell just how badly they’ve been victimized. That’s true of the massive...

June 8, 2015
One of things that makes hacking so unsettling is the asymmetry of the situation: Unlike with a physical theft, the victims sometimes don’t know they’re victims for a long time, and once they find out, it’s hard to tell just how badly they’ve been victimized. That’s true of the massive...